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Saturday, May 15, 2010

Did you know the color of my iPod is orange? This is not by chance or fashion, this is rooted in an embarrassingly unintellectual trait of mine: I root for the Dutch national football team. They will be playing in the upcoming World Cup in South-Africa and obviously, I have been looking for some relevant podcasts.

The first one I found is the Total Football Soccer Show (feed) which is an American show, which explains the word soccer in its title. Over the past weeks they have begun reviewing the participants of the World Cup. Initially their approach seems just comical, teams are awarded points for the national anthem, their nickname and for some national figurehead, unrelated to football, that appealed to the panel of hosts. However, in between the lines of banter, you find that these guys really do understand a thing or two of the game and they find ample room to also evaluate the quality of the players, the qualification and the coach. In the Preview of Group E, I was happy to find that The Netherlands (with the help of Vincent van Gogh and Johan Cruijff) won most of the points and made it to the next round.

In spite of the poor relevance of it all, this helps to jack up the feverish excitement and exaggerated expectations that I should not give in to for this tournament. In an attempt to stay sane, I have begun writing about this personality flaw, in another blog, Gezond WK. In Dutch of course; that is the befitting language.

The most elite of the podcast reviewers (and most especially in the History genre). We use Anne is a Man! as a sort of barometer for how we are doing. Anne is a Man can assume the role of THE podcast reviewer on line; no one does it as well as he does.